Saturday, 19 November 2016

Ape town

About eight months ago, I moved to the ape capital (Location
coordinates: 13°5'N 80°16'E). For a while, it appeared to be the TB capital.
Close observation cleared it up: the city has more apes speaking the TB tongue
than the TB population itself. I encounter grown-up, non-TB, intelligent
city-breds, Muslims, even Malayalis speaking the tongue as if it's the most
natural thing to do. I don't understand, is it the popular culprit again -
cinema? Can't be; I've watched several movies set in the rest of Tamilnadu,
with characters speaking dialects that aren't TB. Is it the Crazy
Mohan/S.V.Sekhar dramas (whose characters speak only one Holy Thamizh Dialect)?
But there aren't enough of them to start a fad. What is it then? Ah. Absurd
superciliousness. [Update (2/7/2017): I'm starting to think it might be circumstantial influence more than superciliousness.]

And then, there are the 'yaar's. I'm all for polyglotism.
But flaunting one's knowledge of the not-actually-national language while
addressing 'anpadh gawaar's, and giggling? That's ugly. Boasting, actuallyboastingthat you cannot read/write in your
mother tongue? That's absurd.

And then, we have the
hypocrite.Thissong
mocks women who mispronounce Thamizh. The woman who sangthissong,
certainly deserved a special mention in the previous song. Interestingly, both
the songs were penned and directed by the same guy. Pick a side - you either
get to practise poor diction or preach against it, not both. Good news: you're
not alone. Bad news: non-native singers have better diction. Good news: your
fans are too oblivious to see any of this.

I have a theory: we ape
what we think is superior or attractive. So, what is it that makes TB superior
to other dialects? What makes the not-actually-national language superior to
other languages? Why is not knowing one's mother tongue cool? Why is
mispronounced Thamizh attractive? (Yeah, rhetorical.)